What affects us affects cats
I have always noticed that the figures for reuniting cat owner with lost cat are much lower than those for dogs. A study in 2011 found that only between 2% and 5% of cats in shelters are reunited with their owners. This should not surprise people because a substantial proportion of cats at shelters …
People ask if cats can get lost in snow or the dark or in the rain or woods. They hardly ever get lost under these conditions but they can get lost in storms. I guess it has to be a strong storm though. The storms we have in the UK are never strong enough …
Are there too many out-of-date microchips on cats and dogs? It would appear that a lot cat and dog owners fail to update their pets’ microchip when moving home. With respect to dogs (from which we can guess something similar occurs for cats) a Dog Trust survey found that less than 10% of dog …
The news that Luxembourg, a member state of the European Union (EU), is to introduce national legislation making it obligatory to micro-chip all cats indicates that the world is changing in respect of letting cats roam freely outdoors. This is possibly the first example of a nationwide law of this kind in the EU. …
I’ll keep this very short and to the point because I like it like that. This is another report of what I would describe as a microchip screwup. Microchips are not completely guaranteed to be able to reunite a cat owner with their cat. I wrote recently about that. This is a follow-up story …
You would have thought that if you microchip your cat you will always be able to be reunited with him if he was lost and found. This is not necessarily the case. Firstly, micro-chipping is not, I’m told, evidence on its own of cat ownership. I presume it is evidence that supports ownership but …
In order to reduce the number of unwanted cats in various countries, the lawmakers are considering compulsory registration, micro-chipping and sterilisation. Will these laws work? To me, there seems to be two reasons why they may fail. The first is that there will always be a significant section of cat owners who will refuse …
This is a quick note to say that on 6 April 2016 microchipping of dogs will become compulsory under the Microchipping of Dogs (2015) Regulations. This law came into force on 24 February 2015 but it seems that the compulsory micro-chipping aspect of this legislation starts on 6 April 2016. The law concerns the …
